


Spring Chicken

by stitchy



Category: IT (1990), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Getting Together, M/M, Miniseries ONLY, Mortality and Immortality, Old People In Love, POV Richie Tozier, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: Richie blinks and rubs his chest. “Am I dead?”Eddie shakes his head and smiles up at him with this face, this perfect, impossible face that hasn’t aged a day since the last time they laid eyes on each other. He’s the same, right down to the tie Richie fixed in place just before they lowered him into the ground, some thirty years ago. He remembers now.“You’re back to wearing glasses,” Eddie says, likethat’sthe most out of place thing happening here.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 43
Kudos: 148





	Spring Chicken

**Author's Note:**

> Alas, finally I have written a purely Miniseries fic! You may find this to be a sort of cousin of "Interference", as it was born out of a lot of left over Miniseries Reddie feelings from writing that story.

August 4th, 1998  
Beverly Hills, California  
  


Well, dinner was a bust. Since his doc banned him from most dairy, carbs, fatty and fried foods, turns out the only thing Richie enjoys about Italian is loading up his fingers with calamari and bragging about the size of the ‘ock. (Yeah, yeah, he _knows_ it’s squid, just go with it!)

“We’re gunna do-uh seaside wedding,” he gushed, showing off his hand. “In _Lawn-guyland._ It’ll be ink-credible. Aw, I’m so happy he proposed! Whatta guy. Great arms, and he’s always kraken me up!”

Dana wasn’t having it. She said she married him and not Rick Moranis because she didn’t want kids- especially not an embarrassing, overgrown one who never learned not to play with his food. He tried pointing out that the calamari was technically _her_ food, but that defense fell apart even faster than the bucatini pie he was forbidden from enjoying.

So here they are, home before 9 o’clock on a date night. Pitiful! Swingin’ Bachelor Richie of yesteryear is boohooing for your loss.

Since he didn’t get much down at dinner besides the salad, Richie raids the fridge for something to tide him over until morning, when they get to do this whole spiel all over again at Sunday brunch with Dana’s couple friends. There’s some grilled chicken leftovers- or maybe he could reheat the eggplant. He should've just ordered eggplant at dinner, but he’s too obsessed with feeling sorry for himself and his bum ticker to do much besides abstain entirely (an attitude he should have taken _before_ getting into party drugs). Truthfully, he _was_ being kind of a baby, tonight. Dana’s not wrong about that.

Richie squints into the electric glow of the fridge, waiting for some appealing yet permissible options to manifest in place of the graveyard for spitefully uneaten health food. Ugh, he should really clear out that wilted bag of celery. And the expired yogurt. One hazmat suit worthy thing leads to another, and then he’s too caught up in his task to answer when the doorbell rings.

“Dana! Are you getting that?” If she can hear him, wherever she is. Probably upstairs on the phone, complaining about dinner to her best friend, Yvette, who loves nothing more than to dog pile Richie with her. The two of them should've gotten married and left him out of it.

She’s still somewhere on the first floor by the sound of her. “Aren’t you worried it could be a serial killer?” she calls back.

Well, as long as he promises to put Richie out of his misery too!

He glances over his shoulder to check if she’s headed down the hall towards the foyer or not, weighing a tupperware full of fetid soup in his hands. He could always bomb an intruder with the stinking stuff! But that was unlikely. Unless someone climbed over the gate or the hedge, they’d have to have the combo to get as far as the doorbell. 1037, the number for the station he used to listen to _Gunsmoke_ on as a kid. Same number he uses for anything to be shared with Friends Only.

“It’s probably Andy!” he reasons.

Dana has finally appeared in the hall, unfastening her earrings like she always does right before settling in for a long phone call. See?

“Andy?” She sounds decidedly unwelcoming to his comedy partner. “It’s supposed to be your day off.”

“You don’t get to take a day off from being funny!”

The doorbell rings again, this time a little longer.

“Coulda fooled me.” Dana disappears.

Richie shrugs and goes ahead, cracking the lid on the tupperware. He can only partly hear the conversation.

“Hey And- oh.”

 _Oh,_ she drops. Not Andy. But she doesn’t shriek like a Hitchcock blonde, either, so Richie grabs a dirty spoon from the sink.

“...It's so late, my layover...” a soft man’s voice tries to explain, but Richie’s only hearing every other phrase as he scoops two-week old glop into the trash. “With the weather...”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Dana says, arms probably crossing. Her disdain is loud and clear, anyway.

“Does Richie Tozier live here?”

_“For now.”_

“Please, it’s nearly midnight...”

Not on _this_ coast, buddy!

Richie drums the spoon on the inside of the trash bin, making flecks of beet spatter off like a Pollock. May as well rinse this and then go see what’s up before the missus arms herself with a candelabra against this temporally-challenged interloper.

By the time he gets to the door, Dana is just standing there with a stunned look on her face, her hand still poised testily, with two large silver earrings held in the palm. They almost remind him of something as they glint in the light.

“Who was it?” Richie asks.

Dana looks out the door to their empty stoop, her expression equally vacant. “Who was what?”

“I thought I heard the doorbell ring?” Richie frowns. He could've swore.

  
  
  


August 4th, 2001  
West Palm Beach, Florida

Richie’s already in bed, watching Leno. It’s too late to be answering the buzzer. Probably just some co-eds on their final binge before heading back to college, too drunk to remember which beach house they rented. Kids these days.

The buzzer goes again. 

He makes a static sound through his cupped hands. “Kkssssh! THIS IS A RECORDED MESSAGE: No one’s home, go away! Kkshhh!”

_Again._

Well, if it’s gonna be like this all night, he might still have ear plugs in his travel bag.  
  


August 4th, 2018  
Sag Harbor, New York  
  


It’s a hot summer night and he’s home alone, again, and ready to admit he’s got that itch. Not that he knows what to do with it, these days. It _used_ to be the ol’ hokey pokey, but since he realized it was cheaper to buy a new house and start all over without the lurid affair and divorce- house shopping. He’s lived all over now, with all sorts of beautiful women. Blondes in Beverly Hills, blondes in Santa Barbara, blondes in Cocoa Beach, and Charleston- what can he say? He loves a beachy haired bombshell, he’s hack enough to admit that! Nowadays, though, there’s as much point to having a silly little girlfriend as in shooting pool with a rope. So, he’s lived here alone for six summers, but this might be the last. Time to get moving again.

There’s just something about summer that makes him restless and lonesome. It’s like clockwork. He’s never had kids, but August 1st comes around and he’s got ants in his pants. He wants to buy college ruled paper and fresh pencils and some new sharp slacks for school. He didn’t even _like_ school, or being a child (a four-eyed freak in the 50s! Forghedaboudit!), but there’s this feeling like soon he’ll be done with this aimlessness. All these days that melt in the heat, one into the next, unreal. _Surreal,_ even. Soon, he’s gonna be back where he belongs- wherever that is. There’s a map of the Long Island Sound on the wall opposite where he sits eating his quiet dinner, and Richie stares at it as he chews, like some golden pin will fall from the heavens through the skylight and land on his destination.

It doesn’t.

Not just yet.

While he’s cleaning up after, he hears the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. It’s odd because he’s not expecting anything or anyone, he doesn’t think- but not troubling. His star is sufficiently faded, he doesn’t get looky-loos, anymore- not that he’s gone fully _Sunset Boulevard_ monkey funeral host, either. He’s just a few homes and glory days past caring if his house has more measure of security than the average bear’s, is all. These days he really only gets the odd petitioner looking to preserve a historic lighthouse, or a surprise delivery courtesy of Amazon and Ambien Richie, who often forgets his purchases. That’s probably it. He checks out the kitchen window over the sink for a truck, but he doesn't get there fast enough to see who it is before they disappear into the bank of hydrangeas by the front door. Just a taxi, pulling away. Curious to see who’s so sure he’s gonna let them in that they sent away their ride, Richie starts heading to the door before the bell even rings.

There’s someone’s elbow, just visible in the skinny window by the door as he approaches. A pale blue sleeve. A flash of sandy hair being combed back by an anxious hand.

He opens the door and it all floods back. The summer, the cycle, the way he’s been inching back towards home over the years without really knowing why. Why everything, every joke, every home, every marriage has felt so empty since.

 _“Eddie,”_ he breathes. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I’m not,” Eddie says, with an apologetic shrug.

"Oh, that's nice." Richie blinks and rubs his chest. “Am _I_ dead?”

If he is then at least he must have made it to the good place!

Eddie shakes his head and smiles up at Richie with this face, this perfect, impossible face that hasn’t aged a day since the last time they laid eyes on each other. He’s the same, right down to the tie Richie fixed in place just before they lowered him into the ground, all those years ago. He remembers now.

“You’re back to wearing glasses,” Eddie says, like that’s the most out of place thing happening here.

Richie touches the horn rim of his bifocals, absently. Yep, he’s still in this solid, physical world, according to his fingertips. “Well, you know,” he starts, trying for casual, trying to match Eddie’s energy like a good scene partner. _Eddie._ His original partner. The one no Andy or anybody else could ever live up to. Richie leans in the door, purposely aloof. “My hands aren’t as steady as they used to be, and anyway I couldn’t get used to progressive lenses _what the HELL are you doing here!?”_ he howls. _“How_ in the hell are you here!?” Through playing cool, he grabs Eddie by the shoulders.

“I took the ferry to Orient Point!” he beams up at Richie.

“Yeah sure, traffic on the L.I.E. is a nightmare!”

Eddie laughs as he shakes him, and he’s _real_ and that laugh is real, _better_ than real. It’s like somehow going back and hearing his favorite song for the first time all over again. _Goodness gracious, great balls of_ don’t question it, Tozier, just let it be! He’s seen crazier things and rolled with it, after all, and for once- this is a good crazy thing. The best! _Eddie._

“Oh, buddy.” All the hair raises on Richie’s arms as he pulls Eddie into them for a hug.

“Easy! There’s a step!” he warns, but he wraps his arms around Richie too, laughing and squeezing back.

“Of course there’s a step, _I_ know there’s a step, it’s _my_ house. You are standing at the door of _my_ house and you’re alive! And youre-“ Richie pulls back, practically nose to nose with him. Looks at him again. “You’re a _baby,_ Eddie! What gives?!”

Eddie frowns, drawing what few wrinkles he does have on that gorgeous mug. “No I’m not.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t serve underage kids at _Chez Tozier,_ no matter what kinda cute Bambi eyes they got! You must be _this_ tall to enter,” Richie insists, and chops a hand a few inches over Eddie’s head. 

“Hey!”

“Just _look_ at you.” It’s all Richie can do. Eddie’s frown relaxes when his hand falls to touch his hair. As Richie ruffles him, he sways a little, on the spot.

“So are you gonna invite me in?”

“I know you’ve never made it that far Eddie, but usually that’s a _third_ date kinda thing-" _Oh that was a jerk thing to say-_ "Sorry!” Richie flinches and withdraws. He’s getting carried away. It’s just kind of blindsiding to suddenly have the great lost love of his life turn up out of the blue. He’s all rusty and ridiculous.

Richie backs up into the entrance, where a long mirror hangs opposite a coat rack and a receiving table. Their reflection catches his eye as Eddie follows him, and _that_ is why he needs to reign it in. No one likes being pawed at by Grandpa. Look at that old, brittle, snowy topped tree of a man standing next to this- well, he’s not exactly a sapling, but Eddie’s definitely a much younger tree. The kind it’s safe to climb without fear of collapse, and supple enough to carve a heart into. The impossibility layered on top of impossibility is outrageously visible, so don’t even _think_ of getting out your pocket knife, Tozier.

Richie points at their mirror image as he welcomes in Eddie. “You’re not a vampire! _Fohn-toss-tick,”_ he pronounces in his most be-fanged Voice. “I probably should have checked before inviting you across the threshold, with the whole immortality thing you got going on.”

A shadow falls over Eddie’s face again, and not just because they’ve stepped out of the sunlight. “Richie, I can explain! Sort of.”

Not before Richie can sit down. He can tell whatever this is, it's gonna be a doozy, and it’s not unheard of for him to have a spell of syncope. He waves Eddie along to come sit in the living room. “I’m all ears!”

“That’s why we always called you Trashears, of course,” Eddie mutters, hurrying along behind him.

Believe it or not, it doesn’t occur to Richie to point out any of the outrageous furnishings he’s cluttered his living space with, for lack of any domestic restraint these past few years. The Victorian suit of armor, Sir Clinksalot goes unintroduced, his collection of chrome plated boardwalk games, unappraised. High Striker, unstruck. Love Tester, woefully untested- oh _hush,_ you!

He sits Eddie down on one of the couches and leans all the way forward, unable to scoot his own couch closer. There’s no telling how long this miracle will last- he’ll hang on every moment, every extra word he never knew he’d get. The line of Eddie’s shoulders- unstooped by age like his own- rises and falls with a fortifying breath. He gathers himself to explain, wide eyes focused straight ahead, on Richie.

“Every August 4th, the same night that I- well, who knows exactly what happened if I didn't die for good, _I_ don’t,” Eddie admits, “-but every August 4th, I wake up in Derry. Right where the pipe from under that old house opens out onto the stream. And another year has gone by, but it’s only been one day for me. And that’s all I get, no matter how far I travel, who I see, what I do-”

Richie shakes his head. “What are you- you’re saying Derry was _yesterday_ for you?”

“Not exactly,” says Eddie. He bites his lip. “I mean, I did wake up there today. I already had your address, so I walked to the bus station and waited for the first ride out of town- but no. The battle with It was almost a month ago, for me.”

“And here I was, gonna ask who does your work, Ken doll!”

Eddie laughs, despite himself. “This must be a shock.”

“Oh not at all, Babe Ruth dropped by for Memorial Day!” Richie throws his arms wide and checks the door in case any other long dead personalities feel like walking in. He’s half convinced when he turns back to Eddie he’ll be gone- but here he is. Sitting on Richie’s couch amongst his mishmash of plumeria print pillows. Richie shakes his head clear. “What have you been doing, all this time?” he asks. “Why didn’t you call?”

Eddie takes one of the couch pillows into his lap and squeezes it, fingers kneading and rolling the corner like a tube of toothpaste. “I tried, Richie, I did,” he swears. “I don’t think you can remember me when I’m not here with you. I found Mike a couple times, early on- and he couldn’t either.”

“Jesus and Karen Carpenter... _Mike.”_

The shape of the Lucky Seven had come back to him when Eddie did, but now, hearing Mike’s name makes the mental picture shade in with color. Richie can recall their faces. But why now?! Why hasn’t he thought about them in all these years?

Eddie sags a bit. “The first time I woke up... _after._ I couldn’t find any of you. I didn’t know it was a year later. I think the 4th must’ve fell on a Sunday- Mike’s library was closed. And they ‘lost’ my luggage at the Inn, all I had was my wallet and the cash I took out on my way to Derry. I couldn’t stay, so I went home. By the time I did, it was so late. I scared my mother half to death, had her screaming at me just long enough to figure out I’d been gone a year, and then next thing I knew, I woke up in Derry again. Thought I must have hit my head when It dropped me and dreamed it, at first.”

“So then you did it all over?” Richie fills in.

Eddie nods. “Right. I went to the Inn and they didn’t have my things. I went to the library, but this time, I found Mike,” Eddie sighs, clearly remembering his relief. “He had forgotten everything, again. But he told me it had been two years, and talked me off the ledge, but by the next year he’d left Derry. Another librarian gave me his forwarding address in Vermont and I found him again, for a while. Since we realized it was a cycle he helped me plan and had me memorize all the addresses we could get for you guys. Really, Richie. We tried to call all of you, but it just doesn’t stick.” Eddie gathers the pillow into his arms tight, and his voice cracks. “And then Mike moved again, because he couldn’t remember me in between and _you all lived so far away,“_ he chokes off. His head falls into the pillow in frustration, and he lets out a sob. “I could never- I never made it in time, and every time! The world was _changing_ and I didn’t understand it and it got harder and harder and I was _alone_ and it was like _I really was dead!”_

Richie’s own throat feels tight and strangled. _“No,_ no no. Spaghetti Man...” And Eddie must really be upset because he doesn’t snap at that, he just keeps crying. Richie creaks up from his seat as fast as his old bones will allow and moves to put an arm around him. “Mike might not remember you but I’ll remember you, it's _different_ with us.”

Mike may be the Royal Smart Person, but he hasn’t always been _Eddie’s_ like Richie is. They’re a pair. That has to count for something, right? That has to give them an edge.

“God, Richie I wish,” Eddie sniffs. “I didn’t realize how much I missed you all in my life until Derry, and then even though I _knew-”_

“Okay, it’s okay, buddy.” Richie holds tight as Eddie’s body shakes with another sob. 

Even if he can’t remember, maybe- maybe he can make it easier for Eddie to get along. Like today, he could put a check in the mail for next year to- to where? General Delivery only holds for a month and requires ID to pick up, if Eddie still has such a thing. Same with pre-paid tickets. _Is_ Eddie still kicking around, legally speaking? Richie stumps himself, feeling completely useless.

Eddie leans in to him, taking comfort anyway. “I am glad I found you, Richie. Of everybody.”

“Aww.” As long as he can do _something_ for Eddie. “If I can’t remember, maybe we can make it easier to find me next time,” Richie wonders. “How’d you find me before?”

“Eventually I went back to the old library,” Eddie says. “The librarians are really good at research. They taught me how to look people up. But by the time the library opens and I spend a day getting a new address, I don’t have enough time to get anywhere. I just have to take the chance it will still work the next year.”

A terrible thought occurs to Richie “...This isn’t the first time you’ve come to see me, is it?”

“I got close, but I never got to you at a decent hour, before.” Eddie straightens up a bit and turns to look up at him with a bittersweet smile. “I kept vanishing on your doorstep.”

Moving around as restlessly as he did, no wonder Richie kept throwing Eddie off his scent. And with how things have changed over the years? Forget about it. As much as the internet must have helped, the march of time and tightening travel and banking security must have hindered.

“I’m sorry,” Richie huffs. “I really have no idea how you get by, getting kneecapped like that. _Daily.”_

“I save up all my cash when I don’t leave Derry,” Eddie explains. “I’ve got a tupperware I bury by the stream. If I put away all two-hundred in my pocket, every couple years I can try a bus or sweet talk a cab into driving me to Boston, at least. I got one to take me all the way to New London ferry, this time.”

“If you put it _‘all’_ away,” Richie repeats, aghast at the mathematics of it all. Living on two hundred dollars a day is fine and dandy when you’re a tourist, but it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.

“-I have enough saved, I can come here again next year, if you don’t move-”

“Do you ever stay somewhere and sleep that isn’t a sewer? Do you _eat?_ Are you hungry?”

Eddie clams up.

“Spaghetti Man! You’re gonna waste away to Angel Hair!” Richie’s not taking no for an answer. He plants his fists in the couch to push himself back up, wincing, and trying not to show it. His troubles are nothing in comparison, don’t worry Eddie- Ol’ Trashmouth will get you taken care of. “I’ve got left overs. They’re bullshit- I can’t have any butter- but you’re _eating.”_

God, he sounds exactly like Great Aunt Mimi when the Tozier clan descended on her for Easter. _You’re a hank of hair and piece of bone! Come on, let’s fatten you up, little goose._

He sits Eddie down in his kitchen and pretty much unpacks his fridge. He’s got cranberry juice, grape juice, orange juice- all the mixers and none of the booze these days. There’s plenty of roast chicken- he just shredded some for dinner. Loads of leafy salad fixings and squash and those little microwaveable baggies of brown rice, and all that other bunny food his cardiologist says might get him to the next benchmark. Little did he know who he might be preserving his heart for, all this time. He plunks container after container in front of Eddie in offering.

He picks an already open bag of spinach to start his plate. “Really, Richie, I think this is enough-”

“I got salmon in the freezer. I’ll make you salmon. I’ll get delivery. Anything you want! Or I’ll take you out!”

There’s a snazzy place in West Hampton he’d like to go. It wasn’t quite the right atmosphere to sit alone, or more tragically, with his agent to be told he’s too old to play Channing Tatum’s father, but it would make for a great date, if-

“Maybe next time, if I get here a little earlier,” Eddie hums optimistically, not helping curb Richie’s runaway thoughts of candles and knees touching under a table for two. 

“Yeah. Yeah, next time...”

If that wasn’t a completely harebrained idea. Who is he kidding? He's a thousand years old, and just because Richie keeps forgetting that doesn’t mean Eddie has. He’s the one with a front row ticket to the ravages of time, he’s just too polite to say anything. And he'd be polite when he shot Richie down, too. Richie would never know the difference, and Eddie’d come back year after year, knowing what a buffoon Richie had been. Has _always_ been. And even in an insane, less than remote chance of a world where Eddie had ever wanted him back like that- what could Richie possibly offer now? A saggy, ramshackle body, worn out jokes, and what? Two or three weeks of companionship if he is extraordinarily lucky?

Eddie keeps picking out toppings for his salad, reading the ingredients label on some tofu with a grin. _“Soylent Green?”_

“I promise the world hasn’t devolved _that_ much.”

Eddie chuckles to himself and peels the film back to snag a few cubes. “I knew you’d eat just about any piece of garbage, Trashmouth, but this is a new low!”

“Har har.” Richie rolls his eyes and circles around the table to the sink for some water. He had been thrown off track from his post dinner routine by the Amazon truck in the driveway- or so he had thought. “Now hang on a minute...” Richie’s starting to get an idea. He might not remember to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for Eddie, next time, but there is a third party who always knows where to find him. “Eddie. You understand computers, right?”

“The ones at the library,” Eddie munches. “I can’t really afford the little Etch A Sketch ones.”

“‘Little Etch A Sketch ones’, you’re so-” _Cute._ Richie clears his throat. “But you can use the internet, right?”

“Yeah, more or less.” Eddie’s brows knit. He’s able to tell Richie has an idea but unsure where this is going.

“Do you know Amazon?”

“In theory. I can’t really use anything that takes a credit card...”

He won’t need it!

“I know how to make sure you have my latest address,” Richie tells him. “I’ll give you my login for Amazon. They’ll always have it if you check my recent orders!”

While Eddie eats his dinner, they think up a mnemonic, so he’ll remember both email and password. To Richie’s surprise, the numbers tacked on the end require no explanation. Eddie gets a gleam in his eye. “I’ll remember those, no trouble,” he says. “1037 was _Gunsmoke.”_

“Why, you looksome ol’ sodbuster,” Richie drawls, toasting him with water. Confident that Eddie will know where to look in a year's time, he takes his evening pills so that he stands a chance of being there to greet him.

As circumspect as he ever was, Eddie insists on washing up after himself. It’s like having him over after school all over again, except Richie doesn’t have one of Mom’s aprons to offer to keep his shirt dry. He half expects her to roll through the kitchen, perpetually coming and going from the pantry to get the vacuum and doting on the little pipsqueak. _Would you look at that. Maybe I should pay Eddie your allowance._

Task done, he stands with his hands on his hips, looking at Richie expectantly. “So? Are you gonna give me the grand tour and tell me about your life, or not?”

“You’ve gotten bossy since you came back from the dead, you know that?”

Eddie shrinks. “Sorry. It’s been a hell of a month.”

“I’m not complaining. C’mon Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Still, with that?” Eddie sighs.

Richie collects him with an arm around the shoulder. “Allow an old man his indulgences, sonny.”

He ignores all the stuff the designer picked out in the kitchen and the hall, pausing only to give the dining room table a thump and torture Eddie with a knock knock joke. This time around he walks Eddie through his prized collection in the living room, and challenges him to try and toss a neck pillow through his hoop from Chicago Stadium (signed by Jordan, of course). He’s not much of a center these days, but he can still talk the talk and threaten to huck another pillow at him.

“Hey, small fry- think fast!” he fakes. “Whup, madeja look!”

Eddie fumbles at first, with him flailing around, but sinks his shot when he recovers. “Put that in your pipe!”

“Nope.” Richie whistles through his fingers and points. “That’s a foul, you went over the line!”

The tips of Eddie’s shoes are still just edging onto the area rug when he checks his feet. “Drat.”

“That’s okay, you can try for redemption on the hockey rink.”

Eddie giggles and follows him up the staircase. He likes the old gig posters that hang there, and stops to look at just about every one, marking the date with his fingertips and smiling at the headshots.

“I’m really only working one or two months a year now,” Richie explains as Eddie climbs up to meet him. “I’ve got royalties out the wazoo from doing a couple sitcoms back to back.”

“I caught one once,” Eddie surprises him. Before Richie can ask which, he becomes a little shy, crossing his arms. “I went to the Inn when the library was closed, and watched TV all day, just hoping I’d see something I could- well. Something else I could care about, if I never found any of you.”

Unsure what to say to that, or what it means to have been cared for so unceasingly without knowing it, Richie just grimaces. “Tell me it wasn’t the one with the talking dog.”

“I think it was a rerun,” Eddie smiles.

Figures.

“You might be the only adult who was ever happy to watch _Frank and Fetch,”_ Richie sighs. “Still, someone’s gotta send all those imaginary kids of mine to college.”

Eddie follows along behind him, peering into a guest room at the top of the landing. “You still never had any?”

“Nah.” Richie looks over Eddie’s shoulder at the nondescript decor within. Even if his return to Derry had changed his position on the matter, any child of his would be grown and gone by now. Just another empty room. “I worked with some great kids on TV, though. And I got my niece and her kids. We’re close.”

Eddie turns back around without going in, framed by the doorway like a picture, back lit by the colors of the setting sun through the windows. “I made it out to Beverly Hills, once,” he says. “There was a very pretty woman. Blonde and tall. I wondered...”

Richie scoffs. “Yeah, real nurturer, that Doctor Dana.” That must have been the late Nineties, then. She hit the road just as soon as it was socially acceptable to ditch a guy who nearly keeled over at the Emmys. _I can’t take care of you,_ she said, which was classic given her bread and butter occupation. _I won’t,_ Richie heard, loud and clear. He was better off not expecting anyone else to. “No,” he says. “I threw in the Mrs. Tozier towel once I had enough for a whole bathroom. But you know what they say-”

 _Better dead than wed,_ a memory echoes, and Richie stops himself mid cliché. Not such a cute, flip idea when pushing seventy as forty.

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “You still need a towel for the beach?”

“Damn,” Richie grins. “I’m stealing that. Hey, speaking of. Come look at this bathroom. Tell ya what- the sound’s _so_ good when I sing in the shower, I’m thinking of renting it out for podcasting...”

So then, of course, Richie goes on to define podcasts while demonstrating the rainbow of jacuzzi lights. Eddie immediately pitches four better ideas for his own than Richie’s manager ever did, giving him yet another swell of _Where have you been all my life?_

It just wasn’t fair. If he were to fill up this jacuzzi with money, could he persuade the powers that be to give them a do-over? No? What about if he melted down all his awards? He’d start over fresh and play to an audience of one, even if he had to settle for a back scrubber and a dingy little washtub.

Well, he’s had the career he’s had, when it comes down to it, and at least Eddie wants to hear about it. He soaks up every little detail in the office, picking up pieces of memorabilia and guessing which of his shows it’s from. He’s googled them all. He even remembers the dates better than Richie can, like an impromptu episode of _This Is Your Life_.

“So what do you do now?” Eddie asks. “You said you’re only filming two months out of the year.”

“Oh, the usual. Some script doctoring. Some voice work I can do from New York. Needle point and cat collecting.” Richie picks at a stray white hair on the back of his office chair.

Eddie narrows his eyes and glances to the corners as if to check for an as yet undetected animal. “With my allergies, I might pass up on your offer of the guest room...”

“C’mon, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says, hooking him in a headlock. “Don’t you know when I’m pulling your leg, by now?” Although he might play up the mystery cat angle, if it prevents Eddie from napping away some of their already short time together.

“It’s hard to tell how seriously to take you!” Eddie protests, laughing and grabbing him back around the middle, so that he doesn’t get his neck wrung. “I’m out of practice.”

“Then come back again when you can stay longer!”

“I will!”

No matter what Richie told himself earlier, he’s got Eddie in his arms again and the switch flips. Brain off, mouth on. “I don’t want you to sleep all alone anyway,” he says.

Eddie stops giggling, but he doesn’t let go. He clings, cheek pressed tight to Richie’s chest. “I don’t want to either. I want to stay up with you.”

Mercifully, it’s not the _Yes, take me to your bed_ reaction Eddie might’ve had, since that could have meant some sudden humiliation- but this Richie can work with. He has decades of experience being bearable for a few hours on end! It’s the years and years he’s struggled to get the knack of.

“All right. I can keep you company,” Richie assures him. He lets go of his lock on Eddie and covers his mouth. He can feel a yawn coming on. “Might invite some coffee to join us, if you don’t mind.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Richie flips on the hanging lights over the living room as they make their way back down stairs. They spent so long in the office, all the windows have gone black, shrinking the space and making their every movement through the house feel closer together. Richie wonders if his couch would still be positioned here, if he was trying, every night, to walk side by side with Eddie. They might like it to be cornered with the other, instead, if they lived together. Then they could hold hands without having to split around the furniture. If he asked Eddie to help rearrange everything right now, was there a chance that the physical reminder and probable resulting hernia would help him remember tomorrow? If he swapped the knickknacks all around, could he keep an inkling of the happiness he feels, watching Eddie decide to kick off his loafers and come to the kitchen in just his socks?

Richie measures beans for two, then tips around the coffee grinder like a maraca before turning it on. “You have to sing to your beans for good flavor, you know that right? You’ve been making coffee correctly? I’d be embarrassed for you if you didn’t know that.”

“I buy my beans already sung,” Eddie smiles, leaning back against the counter.

“Don’t listen to him, beans,” Richie gasps. “I feel sorry for you, Kaspbrak. Well, this’ll be a real eye opener, in more ways than one, then.”

Usually he goes for something sunshiney in the morning, something with pep. There’s no going wrong with Dolly, for instance! But this is an evening ritual, with a direct appeal to purpose. _Hmm._ What choice do the Nordic gods of disco have but to grant him his appeal? He toodles some synthy notes while he grinds. _Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight!_

“Wait, wait, wait,” Richie interrupts his own concert. He pours the water into his coffee maker for _two,_ which throws his routine a bit. “What is the deal, anyway?”

Eddie sits up straight when he suddenly spins around, pointing the pot at him. “With what? With who?”

“You, pumpkin,” Richie rolls his eyes. “Is this a Cinderella, strict midnight kinda deal? Or- it doesn’t matter, whenever you fall asleep, it’s always the same day in the morning, like _Groundhog Day_?”

“What?” Eddie squints. “It’s definitely summer...”

“Was that not out yet by ‘90?” Richie wonders. All those comedies blur into a streak, he was so busy popping up for bit parts. “It’s a movie with a time loop. Oh! Or maybe it’s like _Brigadoon!”_

“I think it’s a mix?” is the best Eddie can decide without all the information. “I mean, Cinderella didn’t do it indefinitely, but it _is_ by midnight, Derry time.”

That’s a bummer. Richie was sort of hoping that however long he could keep talking Eddie’s ear off was how long he could keep him. One could say he trained his whole life for just such a test.

“Shucks. But still. Next time we do this, when you show up at the door you can skip a lot of this mucking around if you just tell me ‘I’m in a _Groundhog Day_ situation.’”

“I can try that,” Eddie agrees. “But I don’t mind explaining to you.”

“You might when you see how quick I run out of jokes,” Richie points out.

The coffee’s done. He makes a cup for Eddie first and slides it along the counter to him. Before adding anything, Eddie lifts it to inhale. His eyes peer over the rim at Richie, the same magnetically deep, dark color. “A few repeats never stopped me liking you before,” he smiles.

When their coffee is made, Eddie takes both mugs so Richie can raid the living room for a throw blanket or two. He leads them out the sliding door, to where his deck juts out amongst the dunes. There are some rustic wooden stairs down to the beach, of course, but Richie is only aiming as far as the comfortable wicker couch. Even with his sciatica he can sit here happily for hours. He takes a seat first and waits for Eddie to tuck in next to him with his knees drawn up close before finally taking his coffee.

“Mercy buttercups,” he says, and clinks his mug to Eddie’s.

Unless he puts his arm around Eddie, there’s nowhere for his off hand to land but on his blanketed knee. So there it rests. Richie watches it carefully, like that wrinkled old thing might take a mind of its own under the influence of the moonlight. Eddie’s left hand is only inches away in his lap, still plump with relative youth. Temptingly unheld. He checks that Eddie isn’t staring at him staring, but he’s looking out at the water.

“This is still the bay, right?” he asks. “Not the Atlantic?”

It’s a little hard to tell in the dark, but there are lights out in the distance, where the jagged coast swerves in and out all the way to Montauk. Richie has to swivel his head around to think about it. “Yep. I think we’re facing northeast, though.”

“Well I knew _that,”_ Eddie smirks. Of course. He always had an unfailing sense of direction. “I was just thinking, how many pieces of land would you hit between here and Bill.”

“Probably a handful of islands, if he’s still in the UK?”

“Last I checked,” Eddie sighs.

Richie does his best to keep his touch on Eddie’s knee light and unobtrusive. “I’m sorry I’m the only one you can make it out to these days.”

Eddie doesn’t like that. “Don’t be.” He smacks his hand on top of Richie’s, then keeps it there. “If I could still fly, I would have tried. Beverly and Ben, too.” He laces his fingers into Richie’s. “It’s something like twenty-eight hours out to Nebraska, though.”

It occurs to Richie that he didn’t know about those two for sure. “Are they a two-for-one, out there?” he asks Eddie.

“Yeah, still. Married, two kids,” Eddie reports. “Though they must be grown up, now.”

As much as Richie misses them, it’s hard to decide if he’d be happy to see them again. There’s such a pain in being forced apart, the same way he feels about seeing Eddie- but that’s mostly balanced by the joy of having him near. The fact that they got to keep each other meanwhile, however- that rankles him.

Is it like this? Do they have all the pieces of the puzzle? Could they have tried to reach out? Would getting back together mean they found Eddie sooner? Richie doesn’t want to be angry with them, but he’s frustrated and it has to go somewhere.

“Do you think they remember how they met?” he asks.

Eddie sips his coffee, thinking. “I guess I hope they don’t.”

“Otherwise...”

“Right.”

Eddie must have the same questions, eating away at him, only he’s sat with them for longer. He drains the rest of his coffee quietly, then leans to leave his mug on the ground so he can nestle in. The wicker creaks as he shifts back and forth, closer to Richie, unmistakably inviting his arm around his shoulder. 

So there they are, cozied up together under the stars, when Eddie finally asks the same question running around Richie’s head, very quietly. “What if we had left Derry together? You and me.”

Richie goes for the least offensive option, first. “Well, I woulda been happy to drop you off back home with Momma. Just like old times.”

It would have been nice while it lasted, coming down through New England together. At some point they’d ditch Richie’s rental, so Eddie would get to show off his own wheels, and drop Richie off at the airport. First he’d probably invite Richie to stay the night, though. There wouldn’t be any flights back out to California until morning. They might sit up late with coffee just like this and promise to keep in touch. Richie would mean it, he would mean it more than any other casually tossed _See you around, sweetheart_ of his life. But would he remember?

“If I had any other option, I wouldn’t have gone home,” Eddie confesses. He sounds very definite, and he ought to know since it wasn’t all that long ago. There’s a reason he didn’t try to visit his mother year after year. He might have figured out a way to salvage things, but it sounds like he didn’t even try.

“I suppose I could have put you up in Tinsel Town for a while,” Richie groans. “Is that what you want? To pack up your little hobo stick and bundle and hop a train out west? See the staaahs?”

Eddie leans his head back against Richie’s arm, eyes cast up to the night sky. It’s breezy enough that any clouds above don’t stay for long. “There are stars here, too. There are stars anywhere.”

“Yeah, but the kind that would cough up the big bucks to be driven down Santa Monica by a bombshell like you?” As if Richie would have stood to let anyone else have that pleasure, if Eddie had followed him home.

Eddie laughs. “I just wonder what it’d be like if we’d stuck together.”

“A non-stop party,” Richie says. “A real riot. The twenty-four hour Richie and Eddie show? We’d get ourselves kicked outta silver spoons like it was our job. Big time peace-disturbers. Be hauled up in front of a judge weekly- _at least.”_

“Sounds exhausting,” Eddie chuckles. “No down time?”

“Well, if you insist, we could take off Monday to loaf around.”

“Oh good,” says Eddie, relieved.

Richie’s brand of creativity was always more a matter of words, but he can paint a pretty picture of that life in his head. Famed comedian Richie Tozier and his live-in ‘valet’ who never seems to lift a finger because Richie is the one constantly waiting on him. They’d go everywhere together. Eddie teasing Richie for his obnoxious tastes, but reveling with him, laughing, and letting Richie dance him around. Richie would throw countless pool parties to show him off, freckled and sunstreaked, and ignore all the bikini babes to oil Eddie up. Whether they were _together_ together or not, he’d buy Eddie whatever house, whatever car he liked best, and move assets with more care, more generosity than he ever did signing a prenup, so that Eddie would never want for anything. He would have taken better, gentler care of him than anyone ever had, and himself, too. His whole life, Richie always wanted to go everywhere, see it all, have everything, rush, hurry, _go go go_ forget where he came from, where he is- eyes always on the next big thing... But if he had Eddie, he would have slowed down and just enjoyed it.

He wishes he still could.

“Maybe Monday through Wednesday,” Richie amends, on second thought. He gives Eddie’s shoulders a squeeze.

“I wouldn’t mind if it was just like this,” Eddie yawns. A gust of wind sweeping up from the beach swallows the sound of it.

This is nice. He loves the beach at night. At all hours, really.

But it’s getting a little chilly, and this blanket isn’t enough to keep Richie warm on its own. And no wonder! It's much later than he realized, well past time for bed, so he starts gathering everything, to bring inside.

“What the heck?”

Something solid clunks against the hard wood of the deck while he’s getting up. Richie swats around the trailing corners of the blanket to see, and is surprised to find a second coffee mug rolling across the ground. He already had one in his hand.

  
  


August 4th, 2019  
Woods Hole, Massachusetts

_“Eddie?”_ Richie’s hand hasn’t left the doorknob, which is probably a good thing. He holds tight in case he’s about to keel over, in case he already _has._

Still smiling, still somehow as young and handsome as the last time Richie saw him- what? Thirty years ago? Eddie takes a breath. “I’m really here, and neither of us are dead,” he says, calm as you like.

Richie starts to turn away from the door. Maybe if he closes it and opens it again it will be a mistake. He didn’t really hear the bell ring at all. He fell asleep in front of Netflix. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “I just need to check my attic for a cursed portrait, real quick.”

“Richie!” Eddie laughs.

Forget his surprise. Forget the shtick he summons like a shield from sentiment. He can’t turn away from that. The sound of Eddie’s laugh resonates through him like a tuning fork, and for a moment Richie could swear every ache and pain he’s ever felt is gone. His heart feels young and strong, and the longer he looks at Eddie, _his Eddie,_ standing on the doorstep, the more alive he feels.

“Eddie, _how?”_

He wilts slightly. “You don’t remember,” he says. “I hoped, maybe-”

“Don’t remember what!?”

“You told me to tell you, last time- I have a groundhog loop?”

Richie wracks his brain. _He_ told Eddie _what?_

“You mean like _Groundhog Day?”_ he tries.

“Yes!” Eddie bounces back from his momentary disappointment. “If that makes sense to you.”

Richie sputters. “It’s like a, uh uh- you’re stuck living the same day over and over?” He’s just recalled that they once clobbered a spree killing spider clown from space, so that doesn’t sound as nuts out loud as it should. His internal barometer for crazy is spinning out of control.

“Sort of,” Eddie shrugs apologetically. “Every August 4th, since It. I live that one day, each year.”

Richie blows out an exhale and scratches his head. All right. He can try and wrap his head around that. “One day a year, hell. That’s hardly enough time to keep up with whether or not the Sox are winning. And they are! Like, a lot!”

“Tell me about it!” Eddie laughs, again. _It’s him, it’s him!_

“Eddie...” Richie lets go of the door and steps out so he can hug him already. “My Eddie Spaghetti, you’re really here...”

“Yeah, but watch it!” Eddie muffles into his shoulder. He holds Richie tight, too, in no rush to let go.

 _“One_ day a year, and you come see me, little old, _very old-”_

“Oh, gimme a break.”

 _“-Oh god, prop him up with a broom handle before he falls over,_ old me...”

Eddie squeezes a little vindictively. “As often as I can.”

And Richie doesn’t remember.

Well, that throws a bucket of cold water on him, all right. He can’t remember how many times he’s seen Eddie, looking like a dream. He can’t remember what he might have told him, and good glory, now that Richie has him in his sights, there’s a lot to tell. He carefully peels himself back, inspecting Eddie’s expression for any sign. He tries to keep his own mind blank, as if it could be read.

_Don’t think about elephants, don’t think about elephants, don’t think about elephants, don’t think about how you’re a gray, long in the tooth, wrinkly old land mammal who just remembered (you’re not supposed to forget!) his mate for life._

“But it’s not a me thing, not remembering?” Richie has to check. He’s getting up there.

Eddie shakes his head. “No, don’t worry. Mike could never remember me either, when I saw him.”

“Oh god, there’s _more_ of you jokers...”

Eddie grins. “Not here. Which is a good thing,” he assures Richie, nodding toward the driveway and the open garage door. “'Cause your car’s only a two-seater and you promised to take me out to dinner.”

The way Richie is sure his face flushes, it’s for the best it’s just the two of them. No witnesses. Thank god for small mercies.

“I guess I’ll get my keys,” he says. “Unless you wanna do another magic trick and pull ‘em out while you’re at it?” Richie cups a hand behind his ear.

Eddie reaches for him like he’s going along with the gag, but slows halfway and curls his hand at the back of Richie’s neck instead. “Would you mind, Richie?” he asks.

“Mind what? Buying?” Richie stiffens. “No problemo.”

Eddie looks up at him, eyebrows dancing in thought. “Uhm,” he shakes his head and slips away again. “Thank you, yeah! Get your keys...”

So Richie takes him to a nearby haunt that was built in the Thirties that he likes the feel of, where they conspire in their corner booth and Eddie very patiently answers his questions. Somehow, setting a sixty year retrospective in a place even more historied than themselves puts a balance on it all. It’s manageable. Still, Richie didn’t account for the fact that he comes to Silver Lounge often enough to be recognized.

“Hey, Richie!” Carolyn comes over, toting an empty tray that she just used to serve another table. “You’re early.”

“Aww, I was tryin’ to sneak past ya.” Richie slaps the table top. “Caught me!”

Usually he dines later, squarely during her shift, but when a man who’s supposed to be dead thirty years demands you take him out- you say ‘Up yours!’ to routine.

Carolyn tucks one of her dark, messy curls behind her ear, suddenly noting Eddie’s presence. “Hi, welcome!” she greets.

“Oh good, you can see him too.” Richie eyes Eddie with a suspicious squint, making him grin.

“Haha, yeah!” She makes a little wave at Eddie and tucks her hair behind her ear again, nerves apparent. And who can blame her? He’s a knock out. “Is this your son?”

Richie chokes on his lime rickey.

_Mayday! Mayday! We’re goin’ down! Oh, the humanity!_

“Ah, no,” Eddie says. He slides his napkin across to Richie, mopping the table where he just coughed up his drink. “Richie’s my best friend.”

“I know I’m no spring chicken, but that was brutal, Carolyn,” Richie wheezes.

“Sorry, I guess you don’t really look anything alike,” she laughs. Just _old._ Just mismatched. She pulls fresh napkins from her apron and lays them on the table, but the damage is done. “Have a good night, fellas. Stiff me on the tip!”

“You’re not our waitress!”

Carolyn gives Richie a wink and departs again.

“Looks like you’re settling in here,” Eddie smiles, blithely.

Of course _he’s_ smiling. This isn’t as rude a wake up call for him. He’s not the ridiculous old relic mooning after someone he has no business with. And oh! If the age gap isn’t bad enough, Eddie’s dislodged from time and probably hopelessly hung up on Beverly like all their other friends. Thank you for the reality check! Now Richie can resume normal operation as an over the hill crusty old bachelor.

They finish up dinner without further incident, and Richie pays the bill, as promised. It's not so late, yet, so he asks what Eddie would like to do next on the way back to the car. Even though he never lets other people drive his baby, Eddie gets a look in his eye that Richie as a fellow car loving man cannot deny. There’s an extra pair of clip-on shades in the glove box, anyway.

They cruise along back roads with no more direction than to see what they can see. Everywhere you look, there are flowering bushes, big old barns, cattailed marshes, and private harbors, charmingly lined with boats. The salt air mingles with the flavors of campfire and cookouts that would set their stomachs growling if they hadn’t just ate. They pass a gaggle of teenagers using a low bridge for a diving board and Eddie stops in the middle of the road to let them scamper across the asphalt in their bare feet.

“Do you wanna give it a go?” Richie asks, bouncing his eyebrows over his sunglasses.

“Do you?”

“Pull back around again but this time don’t stop. I’ll tuck and roll out like a spy. Double-Oh Seventy.”

Eddie grips the steering wheel. “I always wanted to try stunt driving...”

The teens clear the way again and they resume their wandering tour, though after the sun has been down an hour or so, Richie notices they’ve doubled back towards home. 

“Aww,” Richie whines. “What’re you, scared you’ll get caught out past your curfew?”

“I think I blew past that a couple decades ago.”

“Knowing your mother, I’d expect nothing less than a full color sign hanging up in every post office in the Northeast. Bloodhounds and bullhorns. Helicopters with little ladders off the bottom.”

Eddie whistles. “Full color? That’s expensive.”

“That’s the _least_ of what I woulda done,” Richie says, without a trace of jest. The darkening of evening must be having an effect on him, and it probably helps that Eddie is focusing on the road, rather than him. “If I hadn’t been there to see what happened, but I could remember you. If you didn’t come home to me. I would paper the place like Christmas.”

“Richie...” Eddie says, softly. His hand floats off of the gear stick and lands on Richie’s knee. “I wish that’s how it was.”

 _Me too,_ Richie doesn’t say. He’s already said too much. It’s better if he keeps his silly, squandered hopes to himself. 

Eddie sighs in his silence. “She was always so ready to expect the worst. I guess she had reason enough to think I was gone for good, when I disappeared after Derry,” he admits. “But I looked it up. And even after I came back that one time, she didn’t stop her petition for a presumption of death by the court.”

“Ouch,” Richie winces. “How long does that take, anyway?”

“Used to be seven years,” Eddie says. “If she hadn’t died beforehand...”

Wait.

Richie whips around to look at him. “Are you not officially dead?”

“Well, Ma took control of my accounts, and I’m not costing Social Security anything by collecting, so for now... No one’s bothered to tick that box.”

“Maybe there’s a way... If I emailed my money guy tonight that I wanted to invest in some property up in Derry,” Richie rubs his mustache, thinking. “If I had it by next year when you came back... Is a day enough time to get the ball rolling to put your name on the deed? Hmm.”

They’re slowing down now, while Eddie scouts Richie’s immediate neighborhood for the right driveway to turn in. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You need somewhere safe to go! I’m not gonna be here forever, what about after I-” Richie clears his throat. “I mean. What if I move back out west? Have you _thought_ about how long living only one day per year could stretch out? We’re talking about _millenia._ Rise and fall of empires, sink into the sea, _colonize Mars and build a McDonalds there_ kind of longevity. It’s only going to become _more_ impossible to live, Eddie, and you never really got to in the first place!”

The cover of trees over his driveway seems darker than it ever has before. _Eternally_ dark. How can Eddie stand it?

He takes a breath. “Yes, I have thought about it,” he says, bitterly. “I spent most of the aughts crying in a room at the Inn about it.” There’s an edge of tears now in his voice.

The car stops abruptly in Richie’s driveway, adding to the tumbling, falling feeling in his stomach.

“Shit. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-” Richie huffs. “Eddie, I just want you to have something _good_ while you still can.”

Eddie looks at him, chin tucked and brow plunged like a scolded child. “That’s all I want, too,” he says, and then he gets out of the car, slamming the door.

Richie sits there stunned, a moment. He’s said things to upset Eddie before, he’s let his big fat mouth run away with him more times he can remember. Thing is- this time feels like he’s stumbled into something he _can’t._

Without the house keys, Eddie heads to the left, ducking through the ivy covered arbor that gates the back property. He disappears over the slope of the yard where it melds into the dunes, and by the time Richie catches up with him again, he’s made it to the water’s edge.

“Eddie-” Richie puffs, mushing his way through the sand, miserably. These aren’t his beach shoes- his good insoles are in here!

“Would you just give me a minute?!” Eddie stands tense, facing the sea. If he were a cat, he’d be the spikey black cutout you put in the window for Halloween.

“What I said-” Richie stops a few paces behind Eddie and claps his hands to his sides, panting. “What do I know, huh? I’m an idiot.” 

Eddie’s shoulders rise and fall in a huff. “Richie...”

“You’re a tough cookie, you always have been. C’mon.” Richie edges to the side of him staying above the tideline, holding out his hands in entreaty. “You could break out of this. There’s gotta be a way.”

There’s been plenty of warning, but it still gut punches Richie when Eddie finally drops his face into his hands and lets loose a sob. “I just-”

“Eddie...” Since he won’t come, Richie closes the distance himself, crossing into where the water can lap at their feet. He can always get another pair of shoes but this is the only Eddie. Richie holds his arm with one hand and rubs his back with the other. This isn’t the kind of deep conversation with an old friend he had bargained for at all, but he’ll try, because it’s Eddie. “Do you have any instinct about this? If there’s something you can do to end it?”

Eddie pulls off his glasses and dabs his sleeve at his face for lack of a hanky, clearing his throat. “I thought-” He shakes his head, and swallows, still stuck.

“What?”

“I thought I already _had,”_ Eddie trembles.

Richie stops rubbing his back. “Wuh? Broke the loop?”

Eddie nods, finally turning his brimming eyes to look at him. “When I finally found you, the first time. Last night...”

“Last year?” Richie can only come up blank. He knows Eddie came to him in the Hamptons because he told him so- but there’s nothing there when he tries to think about it, none of the refreshing presence Eddie brings with him, just the stale of an empty house.

“I was back with you and I was _so_ happy,” Eddie tells him. Despite a loose tear running around his cheek, he smiles. “But then I woke up in Derry again and-”

“You got your hopes up over nothing?” Richie frowns.

For a long moment Eddie says nothing, he just drills his foot into the wet sand. When he pulls away it immediately begins to swamp with water and smooth away again, as though Eddie was never there, like everything else he tries to do with his limited time.

“Maybe I didn’t get it right,” he sniffs to himself. “It’s fine. I should really just... make the best of tonight.” He pulls away then, but only to head back up the beach, tilting his head for Richie to follow. “C’mon.”

“Let's head inside,” Richie agrees. “I gotta hit the can, anyway.”

Once they’re under the warm lights of hearth and home, Eddie doesn’t look so glum. He requests a show tune while Richie grinds some beans for coffee, at his peril. While he may have been expecting some Rogers and Hammerstein or even some Schwartz, he does not know what to make of _Book of Mormon_. He goes so beet red, you’d have thought he caught a sunburn, but what’s the point of having a friend who plays hopscotch through time if not to poke a little fun, right?

He loosens up over the remainder of the evening, as they drift into the living room. They occupy neighboring corners of the big squashy sectional and share the footstool with their slightly sandy feet. Eddie laughs easily while Richie gives him a remote controlled, crash course commentary on the entire front page of Netflix. He slumps closer throughout the run time of some Nic Cage movie or other- it doesn’t really matter which. It’s mostly a backdrop for Richie to send off a few emails he won’t remember the inspiration for, and to show Eddie pictures of some bushes he’s thinking of planting out front. Eddie doesn’t have much commentary beyond admiring color, and Richie doesn’t think too much of it at first, but the third time he sees him check his watch he gets a feeling Eddie’s just lasting the evening out. It must be exhausting, pushing himself to the limit like this. Every day is a trial, either travelling, or living as meagerly as he can, all while capitalizing his time, grappling with an existential nightmare, and getting most of his sleep on a river bank. The guy’s earned a few winks in a real bed.

“It’s getting late. You can go pass out upstairs, if you want,” Richie says, the next time he catches Eddie glance at his watch. If pressed, he might admit he's pretty run down, himself. “We don’t have to stay up.”

Eddie shuffles back a bit, unmashing his cheek from Richie’s shoulder. He blinks rapidly, waking himself up, and takes a hesitant breath. “That’s the thing, Richie,” he says. “I want to stay with you. _You._ Wherever you are, for as long as I can.”

Richie lowers his phone screen full of rhododendrons. Yet another astute trapping of his geezerhood. Why are seniors so into gardening? Are they _that_ desperate to get into the dirt already? Is _he?_

He feels as tired as Eddie looks, heavy lidded, with creases from his shirt worn in his cheek. Even his usually buoyant hair is flattened on one side. Richie gives it a little fluffing, trying to let him down easy. “You can come find me as long as I’m around, buddy, but you gotta know... One day that’s not gonna be an option.”

Eddie’s brow furrows. “As it is, I could say the same of anyone-”

Right. Could Richie take the rest of the night off from reminding Eddie of that? “I’m sorry-“ he quickly apologizes.

“-But I love you,” Eddie interrupts him. His brow lifts hopefully and he laughs at himself. “I’ve been in love with you even longer than I’ve been alive.”

Oh no. Richie ices over so suddenly, his first instinct is to check his iBeat, but this isn’t _that_ kind of heart problem.

_"Eddie-“_

He gathers himself, determined to say his piece, like he must have been waiting to for hours now. He catches Richie’s hand before it can slip away from him again and folds it in his own, to his chest. “And maybe actually saying that’s enough to stop this. Or if it’s not- I think it’s enough to live on.”

‘To live on’? As in, outlive Richie, get his heart broken, and go on to mourn him for _centuries?_ The already weak contents of Richie’s chest squeeze, defenseless against the crushing weight of the idea. 

“Eddie, I... I can’t let you do that.” Richie pulls his hand away from Eddie. He can’t help however long Eddie’s going to be around roaming this earth, but he can try to save him from the pain it took to learn, as he did, that when it comes down to it the only person he can rely on meanwhile is himself. “You _can’t_ pin that on me. This is my pasture! I’ve been put out! It’s all downhill from here! I had another heart attack four months ago when I first moved here, if my niece hadn’t been down to check the place out, I...” Richie didn’t want to scare Eddie by telling him earlier, but now he has no choice. He stares at Eddie, who refuses to shy from him.

He shakes his head. “I already know about your heart, Richie, I have your Amazon account.”

Richie really is losing control of the situation now, because he has _no_ idea how that logic follows. “What?”

“That’s what you gave me to help find you,” Eddie says. “I checked your recent orders for your address, and I _know_ why people buy home EKGs and low dose aspirin!”

“Then you should know better,” Richie says, exasperated. “If you gotta have somebody, find somebody young and stable you can keep past next week!”

Eddie sags. “There’s never gonna be anyone else, Richie. Even if I had walked out of that old house alive.”

His big, pleading eyes look up at Richie saying _Don’t you remember? Didn’t I already tell you this? I never really loved anyone except you guys. Didn’t you feel the same?_

And he did. And Eddie had died and it had been a pain so resounding, even a cosmic erasing of the memory couldn’t keep it from echoing through his life, ever since. That’s gotta be what really wore his heart out.

Richie steels himself. He has to hurt Eddie a little bit to keep from destroying him. No more mincing words. “This time I’m the one who’s about to die, Spaghetti Man. I can’t let that do to you what it did to me,” he says. He drops his head, awash in shame. “I’m going to bed.”

With that, he leaves Eddie on the couch, looking thunderstruck. When he gets to the stairs, he picks up the shoes he kicked off at the bottom.

These are all damp and sandy. When did he go down to the beach in his good shoes?  
  
  
  


August 4th, 2020  
Derry, Maine

Every time Richie moves further north, he tricks himself into thinking his days of hurricane related housekeeping are behind him, and every time he’s wrong.

What a mess.

There are a few bald patches in the roofing, so he’ll have to call someone for that. The puddles will dry up, but it’d be a good idea to mark them and have the land evened out, later. Leaves will blow away on their own. Most dramatically, though, one of the big maple trees near the road came down across the driveway. Damn it, he _bought_ this place for the maples. If summer has to end and you have to have the decay of autumn, at least it should have beautiful color. Richie doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life watching everything rot to brown around him. 

It sort of excites him, though, the wreck of the splintered tree. He could handle this himself. He's been doing a lot better since his set back last year, and he’s had an instinctual longing for a real fire, like they always had when he was a kid. The woodpile used to be one of his chores- he’d make a whole five dollars for a rick! It’s funny the things he hasn’t thought of in years that’ve been popping to mind since he got here to set up his new winter place. He guesses it’s from being back to his roots. 

So Richie hikes down the driveway to inspect and drag away what snapped branches he can, in case he needs to get his car out on the grass. Next thing he knows, he’s placing a same-day order on his phone for a chainsaw and an axe. He thinks he remembers seeing a hand saw he can use in the meanwhile, so he heads back up to the garage. 

“Enough of your pressed particle menace, Duraflame!” Richie proclaims, brandishing a stick ahead of him like a joust. “There shall be _real_ logs this winter!”

Inside the garage, the D shaped piece of metal he once saw hanging on the peg board turns out to be a woodworking clamp after all, but he may as well see what tools he does have on hand. Richie spends the better part of an hour reorganizing the unfamiliar stash of gardening supplies left by the previous owner, oblivious to all else. He finds some cord he could use to tie branches up, a small hand saw, and even some old work gloves he can spare his hands with. All sorts of goodies. He just needs to shuffle things around and label these boxes a little more intuitively, at some point.

He sings to himself as he rearranges the peg board to suit his own eye level.

 _If I had a hammer, I'd hammer during business hours,  
_ _When it won’t tick people off, all over this land!  
_ _I'd hammer up pictures! I'd hammer up spice racks!  
_ _I'd hammer out nails between my floorboards and my stair rails, ah-all over this la-ah-and..._

He doesn’t hear the scrape of footsteps coming up the driveway until he pauses to find a tool with better syllabic possibilities than that which he currently has his hands on- a socket wrench. Richie turns around expecting a curious neighbor, making their own survey of the storm’s aftermath. The wrench slips out of his grip, clanking against the cement of the garage floor. It’s someone from Derry, all right.

“Eddie,” he breathes, staring at the man standing just outside.

He’s got a jacket folded over one arm that he tosses onto the trunk of Richie’s car carelessly. He holds Richie’s gaze as he steadily approaches. “I’m not dead and neither are you,” Eddie says, looking solid and sure. He stops when he gets toe to toe with Richie. “So stop acting like it.”

For a moment Richie is struck dumb by the trippiest case of déjà vu. He forgot Eddie even existed- twice. _At least_ twice? He barely knew him as an adult at all before he was gone again. There’s no _way_ they’ve had this conversation before... but he’s not nearly as surprised as he ought to be by Eddie’s sudden appearance. 

“Is that... how I usually act?”

Eddie squints up at him, hands raising, reaching tentatively. “Do you remember?” he asks. 

Richie certainly wants to. The way Eddie’s hands find their place at his shoulders, so naturally...

“Gosh, Eddie, look at you. You look-”

“Like an infant?” Eddie sighs, but his mouth twists in an adorable smirk. He always not so secretly liked a little teasing, and Richie could never help but oblige.

_Eddie my love, cute cute cute, baby doll. You look like a fresh struck penny I found laying lucky side up. Too bad I can’t bend that far down._

No. 

Richie shakes his head. “That’s how this always starts, isn’t it? I make a stink about how young and gorgeous you are, and then I get all strung out on what an old droopy clock of a Dalí painting _I_ am, so I push you away-”

Eddie only grins harder. “You’re doing a pretty bad job of that, moving closer and closer.”

“I don’t really live here _yet,”_ Richie points out. “And Derry is just for the winter. I only came up a few days to keep an eye on the storm and-“

“And?”

Oh, he can almost remember- it’s like having a word on the tip of his tongue. He can almost _taste_ it. It would have made a lot more sense to drive up after the hurricane, not _through_ it, but Richie had to get to Derry. He could have called a landscaper from the comfort of his home on the Cape and scheduled for someone else to take a look. But he felt like he had to be here _himself._ Like he was personally expected. Come hell or literal high water, somehow he knows he’ll be here this time next year, too.

“I had to be here for _you,”_ Richie realizes, head swimming.

It’s coming together now. The passing years, the memories, the self-pity he’s been letting get in the way of appreciating this miracle. He's _not_ dead, and doesn't want to be, just because that'd be less work for some imaginary caretaker who never loved him. Eddie loves him and he loves Eddie back, so much that he can't help but be drawn back to him even when he doesn't know he exists!

“I’m here, Eddie, even if I can't offer anything but love," he says. "Even if I get so old I forget. I had to be close, so you could get here sooner. So you can stay for as long as you want. With me.”

Eddie’s happiness shines in the dim of the garage. His hands are at Richie’s face now, smoothing his objections. His gentle fingers run along the deepening lines and brush back his thinning hair, unbothered by any of it.

“I want to, Richie,” he agrees quickly. “I’m gonna love you forever no matter what, I don’t care how long this lasts-“

Richie laughs, unable to help himself. “Well, the commercials say to call your doctor if it lasts more than four hours.” He grins, framed by Eddie’s hands, tilting his head closer.

“I don’t care if I have to go through all this and remind you _every day,”_ he says, and then he kisses Richie.

This, he thinks, would be impossible to forget. A perfect shorthand.

 _I love you._ Kiss.

When Eddie hangs back, arms still circled around his neck, Richie has it all like a multiple exposure, layered together. The flowering bush and the gravel driveway are blurred by his stoop on the Cape and the garage here, but Eddie is clear, in perfect focus. He’ll stick this time, won’t he? Richie kisses him again just to be absolutely sure.

“Wouldja believe me if I said I was holding out for the third date like a respectable girl?” Richie raises his eyebrows and flutters his lashes.

Eddie gives him the dry look of a man who knows Richie’s online shopping history too intimately to be fooled by that. “It’s been two years, Richie.”

“So it won’t be too hasty if I ask you to move in?”

“Not at all,” Eddie laughs. “I just hope you can make room for my favorite mossy rock.”

“That’d go great with the tree stump,” Richie points. “We’ll pick it up from your place later. Let me give you the tour first.”

Eddie loops his arm into Richie’s and follows his lead out of the garage. “Got any coffee left?”

“Wouldn’t you know it? I happened to make a pot for two, this morning.”

  
  


A day that is not in August at all.  
Derry, Maine

The temperature plummeted overnight, and it was much too cold to get out of bed this morning, for Richie’s liking. Hopefully the turkey got enough of a head start on defrosting. Maybe when he gets downstairs he’ll discover it bundled in a thickly knit sweater to match the one he watched Eddie pull over this morning as he promised to light a fire.

When he finally psychs himself up enough to get going, Richie layers his bathrobe on, then steals Eddie’s too, slipping his arms into the sleeves backwards and giving himself a bunchy hug all the way to the kitchen.

“That’s quite the fashion statement,” Eddie says, looking up from the table.

He’s in the midst of his continuing project to hand-write all the holiday cards, just because he has the time to, and because _someone_ has to keep the USPS in business in this digital age. He writes something thoughtful to each of their friends, and plenty of people from Richie’s contact list that even he barely knows. He takes great pleasure in signing and writing out their names at the top of the return address- even on the cards they’ll fork over in person, later today!

_Richie and Eddie Tozier_

Richie hovers behind Eddie and wraps his bulky, double sleeved arms around his shoulders, obscuring his view. “Mornin’ Eddie m’dear,” he hums, snuggling down into Eddie’s turtleneck to find someplace warm to kiss. “Hmmff. You misspelled Tozier.”

“You just don’t remember what a cursive Z looks like.”

 _Oh, yeah..._ It’s been a while since penmanship class. “S’what I keep an old dog like you around for,” Richie teases. 

Eddie struggles through the mass of terrycloth to turn his neck and kiss Richie back.

“Good morning, Nanook. How’re you feeling?”

“Cold.” Richie pokes his cold nose into Eddie’s cheek again, to prove it.

“Besides that,” he grins.

“You know me, I’m Mr. Timex. _Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.”_

“Mind jogging down to the store for me for some last minute sweet potatoes and blueberry? I don’t want to leave the fire alone, but I’m feeling ambitious about the pie menu.”

“I can see that!” Richie eyes Eddie’s stack of completed envelopes. He has extra pent up perpetual summer energy to counterbalance this winter. If Richie plays his cards right and hits that perfect balance of helpful but not underfoot, they might find the time for some festive fireside canoodling before the company arrives. “I _yam_ at your disposal,” he tells Eddie, with a parting squeeze. “All day, everyday.”


End file.
